


Uncovered

by virgo79



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Post-Series, they had a rough beginning but they've worked things out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 06:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8046238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgo79/pseuds/virgo79
Summary: "The realization of his slenderness had shocked her, no less so than the realization of his goodness. They had come one after the other in the parlor of Starecross Hall on a morning drenched in silver rain." Emma Wintertowne reflects on her lover's body and character.





	Uncovered

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in quite some time, and my first fic ever in this fandom. It's been a couple of years since I read this novel, and I just watched the series last week -- I do adore these characters.  
> For this prompt: http://jsmn-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1613.html?thread=1945677#cmt1945677

Emma Wintertowne clearly recalled a time when she had marked John Childermass as a man who loomed, as broad as he was tall. A man who filled any room he entered. Lying behind him, she splayed her fingers over his ribs as they expanded with his breath, just a bit too prominent beneath his skin, and remembered thinking of him as a giant.

Perhaps it had been the silhouette of his greatcoat, lending mass to his shoulders, long swaths of black cloth falling around him like the folded wings of some immense bird. Or a trick of his height, that habit of the eye to see someone very tall as larger than they are. 

Perhaps it was that he’d been Norrell’s man then, with the weight of her loathing of the magician upon him. 

It could have been any of those things, Emma supposed, shifting to press a kiss to one of the vertebrae in Childermass’s back. It could have been all of them. She kissed her way down the curve of his spine, and he sighed in his sleep, one shoulder twitching back towards her.

The realization of his slenderness had shocked her, no less so than the realization of his goodness. They had come one after the other in the parlor of Starecross Hall on a morning drenched in silver rain. A morning after Stephen had ended that thrice-damned elf and before she had rejoined her husband in London, to tell him she didn’t want to live with him any longer.

The morning John Childermass had confessed he was the one who’d destroyed her embroidery of Lost Hope, and asked her forgiveness.

He hadn’t been wearing his greatcoat just then, or any coat. Some task had taken him outdoors in his shirtsleeves, and the rain left the worn white cotton clinging to his arms and shoulders. Emma’s eyes had been drawn to the lines of his body through that wet cloth, to the unexpected slightness of his wrists, as he spoke of his actions in a rough voice made rougher by remorse. Everything stripped away – the layers, the illusions, the associations – leaving just the man, as he was. Laid bare.

She slid her hand beneath the covers and stroked the jut of his hipbone. Swept the soft brown waves of his hair aside and dipped her head to mouth at his collarbone where it pressed against the skin. He stirred, and a rumbling, soft groan escaped him. Emma added her tongue, and the rumble became a sleepy laugh.

“Tickles,” he mumbled, rolling over to face her, dark eyes barely awake beneath his lashes and the drowsy ghost of a smile on his lips.

Emma drew him close with a smile of her own, marveling how a man who had once loomed so large had come to fit so perfectly within the circle of her arms, slight and unguarded, with all the fragile places exposed. She settled on top of him and cradled his hips between her thighs, guided his arms above his head and pinned his thin wrists to the pillow, thumbs stroking over the soft, warm skin and blue veins there as their mouths came together.

There was both less and more to John Childermass than she had once thought. She would never have imagined how neatly they would fit together, or how the feel of him beneath her hands, strong but so thin, would stir in her a fierce tenderness stronger than any rage or despair she’d known before. 

END


End file.
